Manufacturers of consumer products packaged in bottles, such as drugs, cosmetics or edible substances, make extensive use of automatic machinery to fill empty containers with the appropriate contents, cap the containers, apply a label, etc. A typical container processing machine comprises a plurality of processing stations performing specific operations on containers dispensed in succession from a supply bin. The containers in the supply bin are in a completely random disposition, hence a container orienting apparatus is required to unscramble and feed the containers to the processing line in a uniform disposition, typically the neck-up.
A number of devices for unscrambling a population of containers have been developed by the industry. The following U.S. patents illustrate the state of the art in this technological field.
______________________________________ U.S. PAT. NO. ISSUE DATE ______________________________________ 3,338,373 August 29, 1967 4,257,516 March 24, 1981 4,271,954 June 9, 1981 4,463,846 August 7, 1984 4,483,435 November 20, 1984 4,615,428 October 7, 1986 4,653,628 March 31, 1987 5,009,305 April 23, 1991 ______________________________________
However, the devices described in the above U.S. patents suffer from numerous drawbacks, namely inefficiency, slow speed and undue complexity.